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New homeless shelter opens in Lakewood

Catherine Galioto, Correspondent;
8:08 p.m. EDT June 7, 2014

Jamie Busch, Coordinator Human Service Advisory Committee, Karen Reeman, Program Manager Samaritan House and Ginger Harris Board President All Saints Community Center in Lakewood talk during open house tour of Samaritan House, which will be used as a temporary shelter and offer comprehensive support for 9 homeless people. Saturday, June 7, 2014, Lakewood. Photo by Robert Ward(Photo: Staff Photographer)

Story Highlights

Some residents of Tent City and their advocates are organizing a demonstration at 9 a.m. Tuesday to protest the demolition of the encampment.

Minister Steve Brigham said the demolition has forced some of the homeless campers there to bunk up with others at the site as the tents are torn down by Lakewood’s township government.

LAKEWOOD – A basement that once housed storage for All Saints Episcopal Church is now a nine-bed shelter for transitional homeless in Ocean County.

Ginger Harris, board president for the new shelter called Samaritan House Lakewood, said the modest rooms will provide “a stepping stone, a place where all sorts of services could be targeted individually to their needs, and where they feel they’re not alone.”

On Saturday during an open house of the new facility, Harris pointed to the work of many volunteers at the nonprofit Samaritan House Lakewood and All Saints, particularly The Rev. Herbert G. Draesel, Jr., priest-in-charge at the church.

“I believe the small places, to have smaller groups, can be a real solution to solving homelessness,” Draesel said.

Instead of attempting to find the resources to build or accommodate a larger homeless population, he saw the potential of the church basement to transform itself into a nine-bed facility, where volunteers could work individually.

“You know a lot of churches have small spaces like this. Imagine if they were all converted into beds for the homeless,” Draesel said.

The Samaritan House bedrooms and kitchenette are modest accommodations, cinder block walls painted a bright white with twin beds and nightstands.

A ribbon-cutting ceremony for the facility on Saturday was attended by freeholders Gerry P. Little and Jack Kelly, local officials and social service workers, as church volunteers celebrated the culmination of more than three years of work.

Draesel said the shelter was an idea born long before recent news saw the relocation of residents in Lakewood’s Tent City.

“But Tent City did make more people aware for the need for shelters like this in Ocean County,” he said.

More than two dozen homeless people continue to live at Tent City, even as the municipal government has recently moved to dismantle the encampment on township-owned land off Cedar Bridge Avenue and South Clover Street. For the past seven years, the camp has come to symbolize a growing phenomena of poverty and homelessness in Ocean County.

Minister Steve Brigham of Lakewood Outreach Ministries, which established Tent City almost a decade ago, said the opening of Samaritan House is certainly a good and welcomed sign. But Brigham said Ocean County needs as many as 20 Samaritan Houses to properly address the homeless issues within its boundaries.

“They’re not taking in people with mental illnesses and people with addictions into that facility,” he said. “What about that population?”

Many homeless people are in need of specialized services that go beyond simply providing a bed for the night that only the government of Ocean County can provide, Brigham said.

Harris said Samaritans House will provide an option for people who have faced homelessness and “just need a place to learn how to make the transition from tent to home.”

“They will be signing a social contract, a covenant if you will,” she said. “They will agree to work toward certain goals, work as a community, to accomplish that.”

Among them: help with the chores, meet with your sponsor, stay sober and seek out job opportunities or job skills.

“Rapid rehousing” is a term that Harris used to describe the program. Residents are approved to stay for 30 days at Samaritan House Lakewood, and must apply to extend their stay an additional 30 days, and up to 90 days.

“We're not a way station,” she said, instead the facility is intended to help people who do not have a bed that evening into rental housing for a more permanent housing solution.

A large component of the service Samaritans House will provide is giving its residents not just the tools to find permanent housing but, before that, help them with job search tools and direct them towards job-training opportunities.

Each resident will be assigned a mentor, or “shepherd,” who will serve as a guide and sounding board throughout the process.

Monday, a certificate of occupancy could be approved for the site, literally opening the doors for the first residents. Potential clients will be interviewed next week.

Possible clients include one family, made of two parents and their 24-year-old child, whose home was damaged in superstorm Sandy, Harris said. They were left homeless and jobless, and were living in Union County, on friends' couches and out of their car.

“This could be the stepping stone they need to get back in to a home, and move forward with there life,” Harris said. “Want to make sure, number one, they have a secure and safe place to live.”